how much would you charge for those homebrew items?

[King of Nowhere]

I just conceived a couple of silly items that have indeed some serious effects (plus a serious item). they are quite non standard and i'd be curious on how much you'd price that, because i really have no idea

tome of the hyppopotamus defence
by studying this tome, you are imbued with the hyppopotamus defence. you gain the bonus contingency "the next time a foe attempts to attack you, a hyppopotamus will be summoned between you and your foe" giving you cover and potentially negating a charge. treat the summoned hippo as the effect of summon monster V with caster level 13; use the stats of a rhino, with bite instead of gore and without powerful charge.
After use, the contingency is discharged. the tome can be used again, though, and you can regain the benefit by studying it again. Studying the tome requires 8 hours and is considered a mentally taxing activity for the purpose of regaining spells. Only one person at a time can gain the hyppopotamus defence from the same tome.
Ok, I know the way I worded is not particularly good, but try to look at the intent. Basically it gives you a free contingency, albeit a fairly low power one, in exchange for wasting a lot of your downtime. To be noted that I enforce a strict limit of one contingency per person, and exceptions such as this are extremely rare; this makes it somewhat more valuable.

The whole concept comes from a chessplayer acquaintance of ours that wrote a book on this chess opening "hyppopotamus defence", which is not regarded with much favor by most players and is the source of many jokes among us. so he became a cameo in an old campaign as an enemy wizard who would summon a hyppopotamus at the beginning of every fight. this campaign is set in the same world 100 years later, so this is the book written by that wizard.

staff of fire and lightning
This staff increases the base damage of your fireballs, delayed blast fireballs, lightning bolt, and chain lightning by 1d6 for every 4 caster levels. This extra damage can go above the spells normal damage dice cap
Those spells aren't particularly strong, though they can be very well suited against large numbers of mooks. this staff gives them a large damage boost, though, making them more viable for metamagic. Do notice that caster level boosts are limited in my world, so it's impossible to abuse that way.

This item was dropped to the party wizard in my previous campaign. she was fond of casting fireballs at everything, even when she was high level. she was really bad at combat strategy or optimization, and she was becoming the weakest member of the party for that. I gave her this staff to bring her to competence. as this campaign is set in the same world, it makes sense that those staff are still around

phallic staff
This penis-shaped wizard staff will destroy any shred of credibility you ever hoped to achieve. Nobody would ever take you seriously. This can be quite handy in combat, where you definitely want the enemy to dismiss you as unimportant. The first time an enemy in combat intends to take an offensive action against you, he must make a will save (DC 10 + half your hit dice + your CHA). If he pass, he acts normally. If he failes, he dismisses you as unimportant and will instead do something else. this may include attacking your allies, helping his allies, or really anything; the enemy does not become stupid and will not just do something stupid, besides dismissing you as "not a threat". Do notice that area effects can still be used to hit you, provided that the placement makes sense when considering you the lowest priority target. the enemy who failed his save will only attack you as a last resort, after all your allies have fallen or if he really cannot do anything else. This is a mind-affecting spell.
additionally, the staff gives you a -5 penalty to intimidate checks, to most diplomacy checks, and to any similar check that depends on you being taken seriously. It may give a +5 bonus instead in circumstances where you would want to not be taken seriouly; for example, a bluff check to persuade somebody that you're not a powerful wizard, but merely an apprentice, and not even a particularly bright one.
it helps the squishy wizard to avoid being focused in combat, which is a very difficult boon to judge. the main limitation of this item is that it is mind effecting, so at high level it will be mostly useless because of immunities. also, the dc is not impressive, i may want to increase that. then again, it would be strong on a sorceror.

i set out to design powerful artifacts. instead, a random bout of inspiration hit, and i got this

[RNightstalker]

tome of the hyppopotamus defence
by studying this tome, you are imbued with the hyppopotamus defence. you gain the bonus contingency "the next time a foe attempts to attack you, a hyppopotamus will be summoned between you and your foe" giving you cover and potentially negating a charge. treat the summoned hippo as the effect of summon monster V with caster level 13; use the stats of a rhino, with bite instead of gore and without powerful charge.
After use, the contingency is discharged. the tome can be used again, though, and you can regain the benefit by studying it again. Studying the tome requires 8 hours and is considered a mentally taxing activity for the purpose of regaining spells. Only one person at a time can gain the hyppopotamus defence from the same tome.
Ok, I know the way I worded is not particularly good, but try to look at the intent. Basically it gives you a free contingency, albeit a fairly low power one, in exchange for wasting a lot of your downtime. To be noted that I enforce a strict limit of one contingency per person, and exceptions such as this are extremely rare; this makes it somewhat more valuable.

The whole concept comes from a chessplayer acquaintance of ours that wrote a book on this chess opening "hyppopotamus defence", which is not regarded with much favor by most players and is the source of many jokes among us. so he became a cameo in an old campaign as an enemy wizard who would summon a hyppopotamus at the beginning of every fight. this campaign is set in the same world 100 years later, so this is the book written by that wizard.

I'd start with the command word line in the DMG and go from there, adding the no space limitation as well.

staff of fire and lightning
This staff increases the base damage of your fireballs, delayed blast fireballs, lightning bolt, and chain lightning by 1d6 for every 4 caster levels. This extra damage can go above the spells normal damage dice cap
Those spells aren't particularly strong, though they can be very well suited against large numbers of mooks. this staff gives them a large damage boost, though, making them more viable for metamagic. Do notice that caster level boosts are limited in my world, so it's impossible to abuse that way.

This item was dropped to the party wizard in my previous campaign. she was fond of casting fireballs at everything, even when she was high level. she was really bad at combat strategy or optimization, and she was becoming the weakest member of the party for that. I gave her this staff to bring her to competence. as this campaign is set in the same world, it makes sense that those staff are still around



I'd start with the staff price of a staff of evocation and swap out spells based on level, or start with a staff of fire and add on the other spells, as well as a properly assigned metamagic rod price.

[Troacctid]

I just want to point out there is an actual hippopotamus statblock in Sandstorm. It's CR 6, so it's actually even stronger than a rhino. Hippos are scary! 🦛

[InvisibleBison]

Tome of the Hippopotamus Defense: A 1/day command word item of summon nature's ally V would cost 16,200 gp; a use-activated one would cost 18,000 gp. However, by the time either of these would be affordable a hippo is not an effective combatant. I think around 5th or 6th level is when this should start to be affordable, and it should be cheap by 10th level; a price of 5,000 gp would accomplish those objectives.

Staff of Fire and Lightning: The difficulty here is that the bonus damage keeps scaling after the base damage stops. An 8th level caster is getting half as much utility as a 16th level caster. If you cap the bonus damage at 1/4 the maximum base damage and add a limited number of charges per day, it's probably comparable to an average rod of empower spell, so a price of around 30,000 to 35,000 seems reasonable.. As is, though, I'm not at all sure how to price it.

Phallic Staff: The defensive application is basically a continuous suggestion spell. The fact that it allows multiple saves should bring the price down somewhat. A penalty on some skill checks and a bonus on others seems like a bit of a wash. I'd estimate this one at 27,000 gp.

[Troacctid]

Okay so here's what I would do.

🦛: The action efficiency when compared to other summoning items makes the hippo book very powerful. I would probably put it around 20,000 gp.

🔥⚡: Having the staff scale by your CL makes it hard to price. What I would do instead is have different versions, each with a fixed number of dice (+1d6, +2d6, +3d6, +4d6, or +5d6), and I would follow the chasuble of fell power model of aligning it with magic weapon prices: 8k gp for +1d6, 18k gp for +2d6, and so on.

🍆: I would make this a continuous sanctuary effect and have it be temporarily disabled for 1 minute if you attack, since attacking shows that you are not harmless. Assuming we go with a fixed DC of like 16 or 17 instead of scaling with the wielder, then I could easily see it going for 6,000 gp.

[smasher0404]

Just my quick take on things:

Tome of the Hyppopotamus Defence
Roughly speaking, assuming you are actively trying to use the item, you'll be able to get 1 use out of the item per day (8 hours of reading, 8 hours of rest, and 8 hours to travel). A Command Word Item of Summon Nature's Ally with 1 Charge at CL 13 costs 23,400 gold by the SRD guidelines. The extra action economy on the spell is somewhat countered by both the specific activation condition (being charged), and the lack of versatility (since you can only summon a rhino skinned as a hippo). I'd be fine leaving that price as is given the prep work that goes into using the item. So 23,400 GP

Staff of Fire and Lightning

The effect is very roughly comparable to the Ring of Mystic Fire and the Ring of Mystic Lightning (from the Magic Item Compendium). You are effectively combining the two items, taking away the bonus to caster level, making their effects continuous rather than command word based with charges, and making it an unusual slot.

So my idea works like so:

We can try to approximate the price of a combined Ring of Mystic Fire and Mystic Lighting ring without the bonus to caster level:
A Dusty Prism Ioun Stone costs 30,000 gold. The ring is a slot instead so halve the price (15,000 gp). The bonus is much more common, so looking at the guidelines it should be roughly half-again (7,500). There are roughly 94 sorcerer/wizard spells in the SRD, of which 19 of them have the fire descriptor and 3 of which have the electricity descriptor. So assuming a fairly random spell selection from the SRD, a sorcerer/wizard gains ~20% as much utility out of the bonus to caster level as a flat +1 competence bonus (~1500). Even though the Summon Monster spells do not always carry that descriptor, you are are also more likely to have selected fire/electric spells if you are considering the item so I considered it roughly even.

The combined ring in turn costs 18,750 (7500*1.5 for being a second effect+ 7500). Taking out the caster level bonus cost we calculated (1500), the combined ring without a caster level costs 17,250.

Damage for the ring scales at 4/3 a charge, to create a baseline (since the staff's minimum damage starts at 1), we assume the ring has 4 effective charges (damage scales at 4/3 of a d6 per charge, multiplied by the original 3 charges). So we can make a continuous version of the combined ring assuming it adds 1d6 via the following formula:

17,250 (base price of our combined ring) * (5/4) (converting it back from charges per day) * (20,000/18,000) (converting it from command word to continuous) = ~24,000 gp.

We can then create an average of the effective value of the continuous ring by creating these "macro charges" out of the ring's current scale from levels 4 to 20 (since you wouldn't buy the ring if it gave zero benefit).

2d6 (2 Effective Charges):

17,250 * (5/2) * (20,000/18,000) = ~48,000 gp

3d6 (4/3 Effective Charge)
17,250 * (5/(4/3)) * (20,000/18,000) = ~72,000 gp


4d6 (1 Charge)
17,250 * (5/1) * (20,000/18,000) = ~96,000 gp

5d6 (4/5 Effective Charge)
17,250 * (5/0.8) * (20,000/18,000) = ~120,000 gp

Average Effective Value
(24,000*4+48,000*4+ 72,000*4,96,000*4+120,000)/20 =~54,000 if it applied to all Fire and Electric spells

It is in an unusual slot (near slot-less but still requires hands), so that's a 1.5x multiplier => 81,000
I'd also apply an ad-hoc 25% discount due to the much more limited applicable spell list => 60,750 gp

The Other Staff

The skill penalty is effectively a non-factor (you aren't going to keep the staff out when it really is going to hurt you), I'll give a small 10% discount to the final price.

The harm-avoidance based effect is roughly equivalent to a continuous Sanctuary spell effect. The equivalent caster level is a little fuzzy due to the weird DC and lack of duration. I'll place it at 9 for now (which is when Mass Sanctuary comes online for Clerics). That prices it at roughly 18,000 gold pieces (Caster Level 9 * Spell Level 1 *2000 gp).

A +5 bonus to a broad skill category can be modeled after the Circlet of Persuasion. Circlet treats all Charisma skills as effectively 5 skills in terms of price (4500/(32 *100)). These bonuses are much more circumstantial, but are non-typed bonuses so I'd call it roughly even. So 52*100 = 2500

So overall, I'd price the last item at roughly 20,500 gold before the adhoc adjustment, 18,450 gp post-adjustment .

[Vaern]

I'd price the staff of fire and lightning at around the same cost as a rod of empowering. +1d6 per 4 levels is about half the effect you'd get from empower spell, offset by being a constant passive effect rather than having charges per day. I might even go so far as to reduce the cost 15-20% due to the limited selecting of spells that it can be applied to (though as far as blasting goes they tend to be popular spells), putting it at about 29k-30k.

[King of Nowhere]

Just my quick take on things:

Tome of the Hyppopotamus Defence
Roughly speaking, assuming you are actively trying to use the item, you'll be able to get 1 use out of the item per day (8 hours of reading, 8 hours of rest, and 8 hours to travel). A Command Word Item of Summon Nature's Ally with 1 Charge at CL 13 costs 23,400 gold by the SRD guidelines. The extra action economy on the spell is somewhat countered by both the specific activation condition (being charged), and the lack of versatility (since you can only summon a rhino skinned as a hippo). I'd be fine leaving that price as is given the prep work that goes into using the item. So 23,400 GP

Staff of Fire and Lightning

The effect is very roughly comparable to the Ring of Mystic Fire and the Ring of Mystic Lightning (from the Magic Item Compendium). You are effectively combining the two items, taking away the bonus to caster level, making their effects continuous rather than command word based with charges, and making it an unusual slot.

So my idea works like so:

We can try to approximate the price of a combined Ring of Mystic Fire and Mystic Lighting ring without the bonus to caster level:
A Dusty Prism Ioun Stone costs 30,000 gold. The ring is a slot instead so halve the price (15,000 gp). The bonus is much more common, so looking at the guidelines it should be roughly half-again (7,500). There are roughly 94 sorcerer/wizard spells in the SRD, of which 19 of them have the fire descriptor and 3 of which have the electricity descriptor. So assuming a fairly random spell selection from the SRD, a sorcerer/wizard gains ~20% as much utility out of the bonus to caster level as a flat +1 competence bonus (~1500). Even though the Summon Monster spells do not always carry that descriptor, you are are also more likely to have selected fire/electric spells if you are considering the item so I considered it roughly even.

The combined ring in turn costs 18,750 (7500*1.5 for being a second effect+ 7500). Taking out the caster level bonus cost we calculated (1500), the combined ring without a caster level costs 17,250.

Damage for the ring scales at 4/3 a charge, to create a baseline (since the staff's minimum damage starts at 1), we assume the ring has 4 effective charges (damage scales at 4/3 of a d6 per charge, multiplied by the original 3 charges). So we can make a continuous version of the combined ring assuming it adds 1d6 via the following formula:

17,250 (base price of our combined ring) * (5/4) (converting it back from charges per day) * (20,000/18,000) (converting it from command word to continuous) = ~24,000 gp.

We can then create an average of the effective value of the continuous ring by creating these "macro charges" out of the ring's current scale from levels 4 to 20 (since you wouldn't buy the ring if it gave zero benefit).

2d6 (2 Effective Charges):

17,250 * (5/2) * (20,000/18,000) = ~48,000 gp

3d6 (4/3 Effective Charge)
17,250 * (5/(4/3)) * (20,000/18,000) = ~72,000 gp


4d6 (1 Charge)
17,250 * (5/1) * (20,000/18,000) = ~96,000 gp

5d6 (4/5 Effective Charge)
17,250 * (5/0.8) * (20,000/18,000) = ~120,000 gp

Average Effective Value
(24,000*4+48,000*4+ 72,000*4,96,000*4+120,000)/20 =~54,000 if it applied to all Fire and Electric spells

It is in an unusual slot (near slot-less but still requires hands), so that's a 1.5x multiplier => 81,000
I'd also apply an ad-hoc 25% discount due to the much more limited applicable spell list => 60,750 gp

The Other Staff

The skill penalty is effectively a non-factor (you aren't going to keep the staff out when it really is going to hurt you), I'll give a small 10% discount to the final price.

The harm-avoidance based effect is roughly equivalent to a continuous Sanctuary spell effect. The equivalent caster level is a little fuzzy due to the weird DC and lack of duration. I'll place it at 9 for now (which is when Mass Sanctuary comes online for Clerics). That prices it at roughly 18,000 gold pieces (Caster Level 9 * Spell Level 1 *2000 gp).

A +5 bonus to a broad skill category can be modeled after the Circlet of Persuasion. Circlet treats all Charisma skills as effectively 5 skills in terms of price (4500/(32 *100)). These bonuses are much more circumstantial, but are non-typed bonuses so I'd call it roughly even. So 52*100 = 2500

So overall, I'd price the last item at roughly 20,500 gold before the adhoc adjustment, 18,450 gp post-adjustment .

Okay so here's what I would do.

🦛: The action efficiency when compared to other summoning items makes the hippo book very powerful. I would probably put it around 20,000 gp.

🔥⚡: Having the staff scale by your CL makes it hard to price. What I would do instead is have different versions, each with a fixed number of dice (+1d6, +2d6, +3d6, +4d6, or +5d6), and I would follow the chasuble of fell power model of aligning it with magic weapon prices: 8k gp for +1d6, 18k gp for +2d6, and so on.

🍆: I would make this a continuous sanctuary effect and have it be temporarily disabled for 1 minute if you attack, since attacking shows that you are not harmless. Assuming we go with a fixed DC of like 16 or 17 instead of scaling with the wielder, then I could easily see it going for 6,000 gp.

those two are the ones i like better.
regarding the staff of fire and lightning, i think its main power is not much the addition of a few damage dice, but the fact that it's cumulative with other sources. a damage boost on lower level spells make them much better targets for metamagic. so 100-120k seem ok

regarding the other staff, attacking/casting spells does not authomatically end its effect for an opponent that failed the save. though it may give an additional save if the circumstances seem to warrant it

[King of Nowhere]

Instead of opening a new thread for another item, i revamp this one

bloodbath the thirsty

this short sword has a hole in the middle going all the way back to the hilt, as if the whole blade was a giant syringe. and it is. on successfully stabbing an opponent [every attack], the weapon syphoons blood out of the victim, sucking it through the hole. this works like a wounding effect.
the blood sucked gushes out of the hilt, and is magically directed on the face of the wielder. with their face splattered by blood (which, also magically, avoids hampering their eyes and breathing), they let out a maniacal laughter. The combination of blood-splattered face and mad homicidal laughter is terrifying, forcing all enemies in a 30 mt range to make a will saving throw (DC 10 + 1/2 the HD of the wielder + his CHA modifier) or become shaken [when the sword happened to be used in a silence zone, i ruled that it still had the fear effect, but the DC was at -5]. Enemies with half the hit dice of the wielder or less become frightened instead. This effect can trigger no more than once per round. Passing the saving throw does not make one immune to it on subsequent rounds; multiple fear effects with bloodbath the thirsty do not stack, the sword cannot cause anyone with more than half the wielder hit dice to become frightened.
Additionally, when one draws the sword, he feels compelled to utter "my blade thirsts!"; this does also trigger the same fear effect.
One can also, with a standard action, nick himself with bloodbath (1 damage, no wounding) and coat the sword in blood, while uttering "let's give the blade a taste of what it craves!". This also triggers the fear effect, with a +5 to the saving throw DC
the sword is a wounding +2 sword, and that part is easy to calculate. the fear effect is quite hard, though. on one hand, a free fear effect 1/round is very nice, especially with a scaling DC (although the usefulness for my specific party is hampered by the warrior guy's bad charisma). on the other hand, it does not stack, so at most it's just a -2 to some rolls - unless used against low level mooks that would be of little concern anyway. and at high level it's quite easy to get immunity to fear, or to all mind affecting effect.